November i, 1890.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
319 
lectedj and with due regard for the expert opinion 
which the Blackman Ventilating Company possess, to 
a unique extent, upon all that relates to the laws 
governing the movement of large volumes of air in 
motion, and the vagaries to be provided against. — 
H. and C. Mail. 
^ 
BONES. 
The Government of India last October invited th® 
attention of Local Governments to the increasing 
exportation of bones from India, and asked the 
Department of Land Records and Agriculture in 
Bengal to embody remarks on the use of, and trade 
in bones, in its annual reports. From information 
gathered on the subject in Bengal it appears that 
within the last few years the collection of bones 
from village wastes for export to Calcutta has become 
the regular profession of a low caste of Hindus — 
Ghamara — and is gradually extendiug to the outer 
pans of Bengal, in proportion to the increasing 
demand of the Calcutta mills, and the extension of 
railway communication. Heaps of raw bones col- 
lected for transport to Calcutta may now be seen 
along the railway and principal river routes of 
Bengal. Bones are also collected by the indigo 
planters of Behar for use on their indigo land. 
Many of them have erected mills for grinding them 
to dust. The bones brought into Calcutta are 
bought up for manufacture into bone-meal. With 
the exception of a comparatively small quantity of 
bone-meal sent out to tea-gardens, the report says 
the whole of the output of the bone-grinding mills 
in Calcutta is destined for export. The price of 
bone-meal is said to range from E2 to R2-8 per 
maund, according to the degree of its fineness and 
purity. 
Numerous experiments to test the efficiency of 
bone-meal as a manure for paddy have been made- 
in Burdwan and liooghly. It could not, however, 
be ascertained how much of the increase 1 yield on 
any plot manured with bone meal was due to this 
manure alone, for in most of the experiments bone- 
meal was mixed with saltpetre, hide-salt, etc., and 
the experiments made by the ryots were deviod of 
precision. The best guide to the value of this 
manure would seem to be the evidence of the ryots 
who have tried it. The testimony of the ryots 
and farmers was nearly uniform to the effect that 
bone-meal is quite as good a manure as oilcake for 
paddy, potatoes, and sugarcane, but that its effect 
does not last for more than a year, and that better 
results were obtained in sandy than in clayey soils. 
Although bone-meal is aoknowleged to be a good 
manure, oilcake is believed to be superior to it in 
many respects. It is also much cheaper than bone 
meal, and is open to no objection on the ground of 
caste feeling. Until, therefore, bone-meal can be 
ofiered at cheaper rates than oilcake, there seems 
to be no hope ;of its general adoption in native 
agriculture , — Madras Times, Aug. 19th. 
^ 
FALSIFICATION OF TEA IN CHINA. 
A French chemical journal just to hand gives 
the analyses of some teas recently seized at Dun- 
kirk and Paris, where they had been sent from 
China. M. Riche found in his examination of 
several samples, that they did not differ decidedly 
from genuine tea in their ash and in the propor- 
tion of tannin. But in searching for the alkaloid, 
the samples were found to give no crystalline 
theine at all, but in its stead a greenish, viscid 
substance. It is remarked that the highest per- 
centage of tannin found in the investigation was 
16-80. A paper by M. Collin follows, treating 
the subject from a morphological point of view. 
The author gives cuts showing the structural pe- 
ouliaritios of true and spurious tea, both as seen 
with the naked eye and the microscope. He re- 
marks, that this fraud is more readily detected 
by means of the lens than by chemical analysis. 
Every true leaf, of whatever variety, has serrated 
edges. Mr. Hooper, the Government quinologist, who, 
has analysed a large number of teas, informs us 
that the adulteration is, no doubt, due to an 
admixture of leaves from a tree belonging to the 
same or an allied natural order of the genuine 
tea bush. The Gordonia obtusa belonging to the 
tea-order, for instance, has leaves with the same 
aroma and containing tannin and ash in very 
similar proportions, but the amount of alkaloid 
forms a very small percentage of the leaf. The 
Gordonia is a tree very plentifully distributed in 
the Nilgiris, but the leaves are different to those 
of tea, both in their margins and apex. A few 
years ago, Indian planters were looking upon 
their Chinese brethren with dreaded rivalry, and 
this was increased when the medical faculty at 
home were recommending the finely flavoured leaf 
of the celestials in preference to the so-called 
harsher tea of India. But we need not fear 
competition much longer, for when adulteration 
and falsification are resorted to by men of busi- 
ness, the trade somewhere is radically bad, and 
China will have to look elsewhere for a market 
for this time honoured commodity . — South of India 
Observer, 
COCONUT BUTTER. 
Mr. B. C Basu of the Agricnltural Department of 
Bengal, writes to the Agii-Horticultural Society, 
Calcutta ; — 
" I took four nuts of average size, neither very big nor 
very small, and bad the kernel reduced to a coarse pulp 
with a native instrument called karni. The nuts were 
not fully ripe ; the kernel was fully formed, but was yet a 
little soft. After the kernel had been made into pulp, 
the latter was squeezed in a thick piece of cloth to 
express the ‘ milk.’ A little water had to be added 
to the pulp to make the milk run out freely. Ttie 
whole of the milk could not, however, be expressed, 
as I had no proper appliance to do the work. The 
‘ milk ’ was measured and found to be 3 paos or 
roughly 24 oz , of which quantity I pao may be taken 
as water added to the pulp in the act of expressing the 
milk. 
“ Immediately after the milk bad been expressed it 
was churned in a soda-water bottle. I intended to 
use the English churn which I have recently procured 
from England, but the quantity of milk was too small 
to be put into a churn. I should mention here, that 
in the experiment with coconut milk which I made 
in the last cold weather, I had no need to add any 
ice or cold water, but in the present experiment, 
which was made sometime about the end of last April, 
the weather was hot, the consequence being that the 
butter refused to ‘come’. I then added a little iced 
water to the milk in the soda-water bottle, and the 
batter grains immediately appeared. The whole opera- 
tion did not take more than 15 minutes and could be 
finished in half the time if cold water was added in 
the beginning. -Ill that I had now to do was to wash 
the butter iu cold water and gather it into a lump. 
The butter weighed just a little over IJ chittacks or 
3 oz., that is, 121 per cent, on the milk. This I cou- 
sirlered encouraging; but my surprise and disappoint- 
ment were great when on opening the vessel iu which 
I had put iu the butter, I found that it bad all 
melted and was floating on the top of the water. In 
the cold weather the butter kept pretty firm day and 
night; but iu the hot weather it would be impossible 
to keep it solid, unless it was put in iced wa’ar. 
Under the oirounaatances, I believe it is useless trying 
